The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

With slow, deliberate movements, the man tore up the scroll. He let the ragged pieces drift down, scattering into the gloom of the lake’s shadowed shore. The rising waves swept them outward to dot the turgid swells like flecks of ash. Coming from somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought he heard a coin spinning. It seemed a sad sound. A few minutes later he left the pier. The Eel’s agent, out on his morning stroll, would in passing note his contact’s absence and simply continue on his way. He made his way along the Lakefront Street with the summit of Majesty Hill dwindling behind him. As he passed, the first of the silk merchants appeared, laying out their wares on the wide paved walk. Among the silks the man recognized the dyed lavender twists and bolts of Illem, the pale yellows of Setta and Lest—two cities to the southeast he knew had been annexed by the Pannion Seer in the last month—and the heavy bold twists of Sarrokalle. A dwindled sampling: all trade from the north had ended under Malazan dominion. He turned from the lake at the entry to the Scented Wood and headed into the city. Four streets ahead his single room waited on the second floor of a decaying tenement, gray and silent with the coming dawn, its thin, warped door latched and locked. In that room he allowed no place for memories; nothing to mark him in a wizard’s eye or tell the sharp-witted spy-hunter details of his life. In that room, he remained anonymous even to himself.